A couple of weeks ago, I got an email from Hal Plotkin, the Silicon Valley writer and activist. In cleaning out his garage, Plotkin came across a campaign flier from the 22nd Assembly District race in 1972. And thereby hangs a tale that resonates today.

That flier came from a candidate in the Democratic primary, my father, Rev. Bob Herhold, a liberal Lutheran pastor who lived in Palo Alto. While my dad had plenty of grassroots endorsements — and a long record as a Democrat — he was clobbered that June by a Sunnyvale biology teacher, Rhoda Freier.

Everyone on my dad’s side was stunned, though he later told me that being a minister was no help in politics. I was working on the East Coast and took no part in the campaign. But thanks to Plotkin — and an unexpected source — I now know more about his noble but quixotic race.

In 1972, the 22nd Assembly District, which included parts of Palo Alto, Los Altos, Sunnyvale and the West Valley, was considered solidly Republican. The incumbent, Assemblyman Richard Hayden, R-Sunnyvale, was expected to win. The Democrat would be the sacrificial lamb.

Rhoda Freier in 2017

Nonetheless, several Democrats stood eager for the sacrifice. The top two contenders — according to the press of the day — were my father and Rhoda Freier. Also in the race was Roscoe Conn, a tractor dealer who lived in Los Gatos.

My dad was endorsed by the Santa Clara Valley Democratic Coalition. His campaign coordinator was Joe Carleton, a majordomo in grassroots Democratic circles. My dad’s bare-bones 1972 flier emphasized his work on behalf of peace, civil rights and the inner city.

“I believe that political issues such as employment, peace, minorities’ and women’s rights, penal reform and welfare justice are also moral issues,’’ my dad wrote. “We must do more than speak out against injustice. We must work politically.’’

Freier, meanwhile, was the president of a local chapter of NOW, the National Organization of Women. And she enjoyed the backing of several Stanford figures, including biology professors Paul Ehrlich and Marcia Allen. Among other things, she stressed saving the planet.

Plotkin, a 14-year-old volunteer for my dad at the time, described it this way: “She clobbered us with a clever, well-funded poster campaign that used suffragette images to great effect,’’ he wrote. “In the closing weeks of the campaign, her posters were everywhere — I mean everywhere — and they worked.’’

Freier went on to lose overwhelmingly in November to the Republican Hayden, who got 62 percent of the vote. Neither she nor my father stood for office again. And the story might have died there, one more footnote in the litany of lopsided California legislative losses.

But there is a coda. Rhoda Freier’s appeal to feminism foreshadowed the successful campaigns two decades later of Barbara Boxer and Dianne Feinstein. I know something of her impact first-hand: I tracked down Freier, who lives today in a fifth-floor San Francisco apartment near Lake Merced.

At 91, she is a remarkably hale woman, her words and memory still sharp. She had recently returned from a bridal shower in San Luis Obispo when she came down in her robe to talk to me in the apartment lobby.

“We were all of us novices,’’ she told me of her 1972 campaign. “We knew nothing about politics. But we felt we should have a more balanced representation. I’m still in favor of seeing women in elective office.’’

Freier told me she had voted for Hillary Clinton for president. She frets about what she calls the “backtracking’’ under President Donald Trump. But she added that she has high hopes for her great-granddaughter, Charlotte. I asked her how old Charlotte was. “She just turned one,’’ Freier said. “She’s showing great promise.’’

Me? I’ll take Freier’s hope as my own. Although I admire my father for braving the slings and arrows of a campaign, I’m glad he did not win. Being in elective office would have crimped his style and muffled his voice.

My dad died at age 81 in 2006. But like Rhoda Freier, he would be eager to see what the next generation can do. After all, he has four great-grandchildren himself.

The agency’s hiring surge is only for half of the funds generated under SB 1; the other half is going to cities and counties for transportation improvements projects, which are also expected to generate new jobs.